> Unfortunately Tim you know as well as I do this is the way the world
> works. I wish I was wrong. The first space travellers will be the wealthy
> (ref. air travel), most likely they will also be the first to have any
> significant interaction with future AI (after the scientists who designed
> them). If "Uploading" were to become feasible in our lifetimes, I doubt I'd
> be anywhere near the foodchain as there would be a queue of billionaires
> ahead of me. It reminds me that in the event of a nuclear war who would be
> the people in the safest environment? I wonder if "Uploading" or
> interaction with a vastly superior intelligence were available today who
> would be really be interacting/uploading?
>

Our interactions will be mediated by the market. Think about a factory
worker in Haiti: he spends twelve hours a day stitching together baseballs,
even though he may be completely ignorant of the rules of the sport, the
people who play it, and the cultural and economic institutions necessary for
Americans to have enough leisure time and disposable income to pay someone
else to handle such boring chores.

If there is an AI right now, for all you and I know it's doing credit market
arbitrage or something, and collectively changing the behavior of millions
of people by minuscule amounts. If you make it greedy but noncoercive, it's
probably going to do something like that (and if it's benevolent, it might
still know that the best way to do good is to sling around billions of
dollars).

I don't think there's an answer to your last question, but I can think of a
useful way to rephrase it: Assume there's an AI right now; where is it
hiding, and who knows it's there?